T.G.I.... Monday? Happy Birthday Alex!

Monday - June  10, 2013.

Today starts the real on-campus programming at Technos.  This week will involve the faculty teaching in classrooms at Technos, students experiencing different classes, and a whole lot of half-day and full day field trips.  I'm also beginning to realize that the faculty time with the students is now going to be very limited.  It already was over the weekend but now, formally, we are scheduled with very different itineraries than the students.

Yesterday, many of the students went to Disneyland Tokyo.  It may seem silly at first that you'd be in Tokyo and go to Disney, but you have to understand, we've got American students mostly from Northern states and students from England, New Zealand and Taiwan.  Many students have never been this close to a Disney theme park.  Plus, they got to all go together... which was a huge part of the fun.  So this morning it was entertaining to hear stories of Space Mountain, etc., during breakfast.

This afternoon some of the faculty were scheduled to teach their class.  I don't teach until Thursday so I had the afternoon free.  This morning we had a field trip to a near by temple called Jindai-Ji Temple.  Built in 733, the temple is the second oldest in the Tokyo area.  It's located in the Chofu area of Tokyo which has a bit of a suburb feel to it, even more so than Fuchu. 

The entrance to the temple area.

A place for offerings.

I thought these huge metal flowers were beautiful.

The turtle was a nice touch.  It probably looks awesome when there is a little bit of water in it.

A beautiful bonsai tree.

This flower had frogs.  Again, nice touch!

Inside the main temple.  It's really hard to get a good shot.  It's a small room and there is a lot of decor. It's much better in person.

This is a fun picture of a very old buddha statue.  The statue is thought to be about 1300 years old.  It is behind glass and you can see the glare of the light hitting the glass.  There is a huge circular structure to cut down on some of the glare which creates this effect of a circular halo around the center of the shot.  If you look closely, you can see the reflection of me taking the picture in the shot. 

Apparently it is tradition to eat soba noodles when visiting this area so we did that for lunch.  Again, the tempura that was served with the noodles was my favorite part of the meal.  While we were here we also painted some pottery which was fun.  I picked a little sake pitcher to paint.  I had an idea but it turned out pretty bad.  Yuji made fun of me.  hahaha  I also purchased a nice little piece of pottery for HWS student, Alex.  Today was his birthday and I wanted to make sure I got him a little something.

After our half-day trip we went back to Technos.  Some of the faculty prepped their lectures for today.  The rest of us were free for the day.  I went back to Fuchu and did a little shopping and this is a fitting time to talk about the dollar stores in Japan.  The dollar stores are a great place to buy souvenirs.  (Actually the stores are called the 100 yen stores but the exchange rate was such that it was just about a dollar.)  These stores are loaded with great little Japanese items... sake bowls and pourers, chopsticks, fun candies, cheap fans for kids, a good array of Hello Kitty merchandise, etc.   I highly recommend that, if you need to bring back a lot of little souvenirs you check out one of the 100 yen stores. 

As soon as I returned to the hotel, I ran into Yuji who had big plans for Alex's birthday.  He wanted to get a group together and go to Shibuya and go to a TGIFridays.  While I was surprised he mentioned TGIFridays, I was happy that he was doing something for Alex so I told him that I was definitely "in."  Yuji first wanted to go to the dollar store and buy some part favors.  HAHAHA  So I immediately went back with Yuji and with Oxford Mike to the dollar store where we bought some ridiculous stuff.  Along the way we also split an order of Takoyaki.  Takoyaki are little balls of batter traditionally filled with octopus.  We ordered a little boat of about 10 pieces.  Each piece is about the size of a hushpuppie.  

Not my favorite Japanese food but I find myself craving them already.

Back at the hotel we rendezvoused with Alex and a huge group of students and we were back to Shibuya.  I was excited to see it at night.

Alex sports some of his dollar store gear!  Yuji picked out most of this stuff.

Shibuya on a Monday night.

TGIFridays adventure!

Alex is served his birthday sundae.

HWS looking good on Alex's birthday!

After we left "Fridays" we strolled around Shibuya a bit and then most of us headed back to the hotel.  It was nice to spend some time with the students and it's always nice to spend some time with Yuji when he doesn't have to work so hard in his tour leader position.  Looking forward to tomorrow which involves a full-day tour of the Tokyo area!